Sunday, 28 May 2017

That would be the shorter version of Ross Douthat, who wants to remove Trump outright, not tinker with presidential powers:

[S]o long as Trump remains the president — and even those of us who imagine 25th Amendment remedies would be wise to bet on at least three years and seven months more — then ad hoc, partisan and extra-constitutional attempts to strip him of normal presidential powers are a very bad idea.

This is basically what we have in the Fourth Circuit Court’s ruling striking down the administration’s controversial travel ban, which seeks to temporarily restrict travel to the United States from six majority-Muslim countries — Sudan, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia — that are either ruled by terror-sponsoring governments or in the throes of civil war.

There are reasons to think this ban overbroad, counterproductive, damaging to U.S. interests. But it not a “Muslim ban” under any reasonable legal definition of the term, and on its face it looks entirely constitutional. As the Fourth Circuit concedes, the president has broad powers to restrict the entry of noncitizens, and an executive order restricting travel from a specified set of terror-affected countries would normally easily pass muster.

Not all of us are rich yet, of course. A billion or so people on the planet drag along on the equivalent of $3 a day or less. But as recently as 1800, almost everybody did.

The Great Enrichment began in 17th-century Holland. By the 18th century, it had moved to England, Scotland and the American colonies, and now it has spread to much of the rest of the world.

Economists and historians agree on its startling magnitude: By 2010, the average daily income in a wide range of countries, including Japan, the United States, Botswana and Brazil, had soared 1,000 to 3,000 percent over the levels of 1800. People moved from tents and mud huts to split-levels and city condominiums, from waterborne diseases to 80-year life spans, from ignorance to literacy.

You might think the rich have become richer and the poor even poorer. But by the standard of basic comfort in essentials, the poorest people on the planet have gained the most. In places like Ireland, Singapore, Finland and Italy, even people who are relatively poor have adequate food, education, lodging and medical care — none of which their ancestors had. Not remotely.

[...]

We can improve the conditions of the working class. Raising low productivity by enabling human creativity is what has mainly worked. By contrast, taking from the rich and giving to the poor helps only a little — and anyway expropriation is a one-time trick. Enrichment from market-tested betterment will go on and on and, over the next century or so, will bring comfort in essentials to virtually everyone on the planet, and more to an expanding middle class.

[...]

The root cause of enrichment was and is the liberal idea, spawning the university, the railway, the high-rise, the internet and, most important, our liberties. What original accumulation of capital inflamed the minds of William Lloyd Garrison and Sojourner Truth? What institutions, except the recent liberal ones of university education and uncensored book publishing, caused feminism or the antiwar movement? Since Karl Marx, we have made a habit of seeking material causes for human progress. But the modern world came from treating more and more people with respect.

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

The White House disclosed the meeting only in March, playing down its significance. But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest.

Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.

JFK famously set up a backchannel with the Soviets to help resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. The differences being that (a) he’d actually taken office and (b) clearly viewed the Rooskie thugs of his era as adversaries, not partners.

Friday, 26 May 2017

Judge Gregory insists that the policy amounts to “invidious discrimination,” which means discrimination that has no rational basis. That plainly is not the case: The rational basis for the policy is preventing jihadists from entering the United States. Maybe that is not a rational basis of which you approve — and maybe it is not even a particularly strong rational basis — but it is a rational basis nonetheless. Even if we were to assume that the standards of protection from discrimination that apply to U.S. citizens apply to foreigners abroad with no connection to the United States — and they do not — the rational basis of the law is fairly straightforward.

If the Immigration and Nationality Act itself is partly unconstitutional, then the courts should say so. If Congress does not like the content of 8 U.S. Code § 1182, then Congress can change it. But to set aside a presidential act that accords perfectly well with the letter of the law as the law stands because a judge believes that he detects malice on the president’s part is not jurisprudence.

People were lining up to correctly call laughable the assertion that Donny was in any way responsible for the Montana candidate’s beatdown of a reporter, and he does this:

While walking with the NATO leaders during his visit to the alliance’s headquarters Thursday, President Donald Trump pushed aside Dusko Markovic, the prime minister of Montenegro, as he moved to the front of a group of the leaders.

Also, Donny has gone from calling NATO obsolete to insisting he be seen as its leader.

President Donald J. Trump has produced a very silly budget proposal. Thankfully, presidential budget proposals have all the effect of a mouse passing gas in a hurricane — Congress, not the president, actually appropriates funds and writes the tax code.

Kevin Williamson and his readers understand that. Libertyblog’s readers understand that. But a substantial number of Americans will interpret any deviation from Trump’s budget as proof that a cabal of globalists are conspiring against them.

Thursday, 25 May 2017

Political change requires more than one unfocused, ill-informed, irritable man:

[T]he Trump administration hasn’t created a new populist departure in American politics; it hasn’t even — as some of us hoped — nudged Republican policymaking in a more populist direction to better account for the interests of working-class voters. The early months of the Trump administration have proven to be populism’s false start.

Why is this?

There is no Trumpist wing of Congress. The most pro-Trump faction in Congress during the election was the Freedom Caucus, which shared Trump’s disdain for the Republican establishment. But the Freedom Caucus is made up of ideological conservatives concerned with limiting government, not Trumpian populists focused on the interests of the working class. When the Freedom Caucus helped bring down the initial version of the House health-care bill, Trump briefly went after it.

Even in the White House itself, it turns out that Trumpists are only one faction. This is, in part, because there was no populist staff-in-waiting in Washington to draw on. The people in Congress with the greatest affinity for Trump-style populism were Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Representative Dave Brat of Virginia, who beat Eric Cantor in a primary in an immigration-focused insurgency. Sessions, an early Trump endorser, has former staff scattered through the administration, most importantly Stephen Miller, the policy director in the White House. Otherwise there was no well of populist talent to draw on, except a few refugees from Breitbart.

They haven’t had the oomph or the numbers to prevail over the establishment, “globalist,” or Trump-family elements in the White House. They haven’t decisively lost to these other factions — Steve Bannon hasn’t been ousted — but they have been more embattled than anyone would have thought a few months ago.